


Not Quite Back Where I Started

by Escalus



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friendship, M/M, Meta, Neurodiversity, Post-Episode AU: s02e12 Master Plan, Stiles Stilinski is Part of the Hale Pack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26055196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escalus/pseuds/Escalus
Summary: In the aftermath of the battle at the warehouse, Stiles has come to an emotional decision.  Now, he has to tell his best friend something that will change their relationship forever.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 102
Kudos: 114





	Not Quite Back Where I Started

When Stiles knocked on the door, Scott was sitting in the living room. He did a double take at the sound, because he could literally hear that it was his best friend. Stiles never knocked, and he didn’t have to. 

He paused the video game and went to the door. “What happened? I was waiting at the practice field for like an hour.”

“I had something that I had to do,” Stiles said, but he didn’t seem to want to elaborate. That was Scott’s first clue that something was wrong. 

“What’s the matter?”

“Let’s go inside. We have something to talk about.”

“Did anything happen?”

“I told you, we have something to talk about.”

Scott turned around and went inside, flopping down on the couch and waiting for Stiles to do the same. Stiles was being stiff and formal, like the time he broke Scott’s Gameboy in the seventh grade. He fervently hoped that it wasn’t going to be like that. Before admitting that he broke the Gameboy, Stiles had gone on a forty-minute rant about how Scott was the worst person he had ever met.

He sat down and waited for Stiles to settle himself. His best friend was often nervous and upset, so Scott had learned over many years to let Stiles reach the point where he could bring himself to say what he needed to say.

Stiles looked down. “The reason I skipped practicing with you is that I …” His eyes darted up and then back down. “I’ve joined Derek’s pack.”

Scott’s first reaction would have been to laugh out loud, but Stiles wasn’t acting the way he did when it was a joke. When Stiles joked he looked you straight in the eye and there was an energy behind his gaze, eager to see you get his humor. There was something else going on behind that gaze now. 

So all Scott said was “Okay.”

Stiles was visibly thrown. “Okay? Just Okay?”

“What did you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. I wanted you to care a little bit, maybe?”

“I do care!” Scott protested. “I care a lot. But …”

“But what?”

“Caring doesn’t mean I get to question your decisions, and it certainly doesn’t mean that I get to control who you hang out with. You want to hang out with Derek, Peter, and Isaac, then I don’t have any right to say anything about it.”

“Pack,” Stiles began, eagerly and severely, “is about more than hanging out.”

“Okay.” So that’s what this was then. Scott stopped himself from sighing.

“Pack is about having each other’s back and putting them first.”

“Oh, I see now. This is a lacrosse-ball and duct-tape thing.” Scott said. “Why didn’t you just come out and say you were angry with me?”

“What do you mean by that?” Stiles had a look on his face like he felt cheated. 

“This is like the time when you blamed me for your father getting hurt in the parking lot, the night of the Parent-Teacher’s Conference. You know, how the next day you told me you were going to help me learn to control the shift, but you also decided to secretly punish me a bit with a little torture?” 

“That wasn’t torture.”

“Look up the word ‘torture’ in the dictionary. You beat me and then you had three guys beat me when you knew I couldn’t defend myself. You were mad, I get it. This is obviously the same thing. It's not _just_ about you telling me that you’ve joined a werewolf pack, it’s about punishing me for something, isn’t it? You want me to get angry that you've sided with Derek. You want to hurt me.”

Stiles worked his jaw the way he did when things didn’t go his way. Finally, he said sourly, “Yeah.”

“So, why don’t you just come out and say why you’re angry.”

“You don’t take being a pack seriously.” 

“Do you mean I don’t take how Derek thinks a pack should be like seriously? No, I don’t.”

“See!” 

“Derek wants to rebuild his family. I already have one. Derek wants to control the people in his life. I don’t need that.”

“You call it control, I call it taking care of them.”

Scott laughed and Stiles scowled. 

“Should we call Jackson? Should we call Erica and Boyd? See what they have to say about that?” Scott shook his head. “He abandoned Jackson to die, and he made Erica and Boyd feel so unsafe that they ran away. So let’s stop pretending this is about Derek making you feel loved and tell me what I did wrong.”

“You hung up on me. I was in danger and you hung up on me because you were with Allison.”

Scott bit down on the snarl. “Are you serious? I hung up on you because I was breaking into a safe in Gerard’s bedroom trying to find the bestiary so we could clean up Derek’s mess, and I’m not fucking James Bond, okay? I didn’t know you were in danger, and if I did I would have left immediately. You know that. Instead, I left three minutes later. I still pulled you from the pool in time, didn’t I?” 

“What if next time you don’t leave three minutes later but an hour later?” 

“What if next time I don’t manage to catch the crossbow bolt you shot at the back of my head?”

Stiles threw up his arms and got up. “That was an accident!”

“Yes. Exactly. They were accidents. Which is why I didn’t get mad when you did it. Why are you mad?”

“You’ve been having a lot of accidents, like accidentally not telling me about your plan with Gerard. Like accidentally using Derek to Bite Gerard.”

Scott sat there and waited for Stiles to stop pacing. Finally, it got through his thick skull what was really going on. “Oh.”

“Oh? What does that mean? Oh what? Come on, Scott, I know it’s hard for you to talk in complete sentences, but you could try to defend yourself a little.”

Scott stood up and flashed his eyes. “Let’s start with, oh, when my best friend gets all in my face, maybe it’s not the best idea for him to call me stupid, especially since he’s following an alpha who would be dead right now if I hadn’t figured out what Gerard wanted.”

“But you didn’t tell me!” Stiles yelled.

“Why do you think I didn’t tell you, Stiles?”

“I don’t know! Why do you think I’m angry?” Stiles shouted. 

“You could have asked, maybe, before now? It was because that I realized, right after Gerard stabbed a hunting knife in my gut in the hospital parking lot, that he would do anything to get what he wanted, including killing anyone who might be able to stop him from getting the cure for his cancer. I bet that he wouldn’t try to kill you if he didn’t think you knew anything.”

“Well, then you bet wrong.” Stiles pointed to his eye. “Did you think I got this by running into a door?”

“It’s better than being choked out by a giant lizard. Anyway, I’m not responsible for Gerard being a bad guy, so I’m not responsible for what the bad guys do. If I had told you what I knew, would you have decided not to play in the State Championship game? Answer me, and remember, I can hear if you’re lying.”

“Yeah, I would have played, but I also would have told Derek.”

“Derek? Kill-them-first Derek? Tell me, since you’re part of his pack now, what was his plan for defeating Gerard?”

“He didn’t have one. Maybe he would have listened …” Stiles hesitated.

“You know as well as I do that he wouldn’t have listened to anyone but himself and Peter. I told you how he admitted to that he couldn’t explain how both Lydia and Jackson hadn’t changed, but he was going to kill her anyway” Scott took a step forward to get into Stiles’s space. “And what’s with that? Derek tries to kill Lydia and Peter uses Lydia to resurrect himself and you just don’t care?”

“It’s never going to work out between me and Lydia.” Stiles shrugged but turned away. “Maybe I’m growing up, but there’s no reason to pursue someone who doesn’t want me.” 

“That sounds like there’s someone who does want you.”

“What? No.” Stiles heart went into overdrive. Scott smelled the arousal. 

“Oh, God. It’s Derek. Did he seduce you like he seduced Erica?”

“What?”

Scott sneered. “Isaac told me how he got Erica to accept the Bite. He ran his hand up and down her leg in the morgue. Did he do the same to you?”

Stiles swung a fist at Scott’s head, but Scott easily caught it. “If you’re not in my pack anymore, you don’t get to hit me.” He threw Stiles’s arm down.

“Derek didn’t seduce me. He’s interested in me. He listens to me. He doesn’t ditch me …” 

“Oh, fuck off. I can’t believe I have to listen to this.”

“How many times have you ditched me for Allison?”

“Never. I’ve never ditched you with Allison. I’ve ditched someone four times in the last three months, and every single time, the person I ditched was Allison. The last time I ditched, I ditched her for you.”

“You’ve been spending more time with her than with me.”

“Uh, not really. We’ve been sneaking around because her parents didn’t want her dating a werewolf, but I still spend more time with you than with her. But even if I did, so what? That’s what happens when you get a girlfriend or a boyfriend or someone – you spend time with them. We’ve spent ten years together. Are you jealous?”

“No.” Stiles said it in the way that mean yes, he was jealous, but he didn’t admit it because he knew it sounded petty. 

“It’s all right to be jealous.”

“I’m not jealous!” Stiles waggled his fingers in Scott’s face. “I just wanted you to put me first sometimes. I told Gerard that you’d come for me, and you didn’t.”

For the first time since Stiles started this conversation, Scott felt sick. “I tried.”

“Did you?”

“Did you see your locker at school? Who do you think ripped it off its hinges? We were going to track you by scent, but Derek stopped us. I sent seventeen text messages.”

“So now it’s Derek’s fault you didn’t come for me?”

“No. It’s my fault. I made the decision that stopping Gerard was more important than tracking down where you’d been taken. You want to be mad at me for that, go ahead.”

Tears had filled Stiles’s eyes. “You were supposed to be my best friend.”

“I made a call. I didn’t think that Gerard would hurt you, because you were human, and that if he hurt you, he’d have the Sheriff on his ass. Derek and Peter knew that Gerard was up to something with Jackson, they demanded that I go with them, so I had to _make a call.”_

“Don’t ask me why I joined Derek’s pack, then.”

"I can't believe you're punishing me because, for the first time in ten years, I had more important things to think about than you.”

“Yes! I’ve been with you forever! I’ve been with you since your dad left. I’ve been with you when you when you had asthma attacks. I’ve been with you when people picked on you in school. I was with you when you got turned into a werewolf. I’ve been with you! And you’ve been with me!”

Scott took a step back. “Yes, I have. I was there when your mom died. I was there when people called you a freak. I didn’t push you away when I got Bit or when I found Allison. But my life doesn’t belong to you. If you want to, you’ll always have a place in it, but you don’t get to decide what I think is important. You don’t get to determine who I care about and who I don’t. So stop trying to hurt me because I won’t be your minion.”

Scott breathed heavily, letting his body settle, letting his eyes come back to normal. Across from him, Stiles had the nerve to look hurt and disappointed, as if he was shocked by the turn of events. Scott guessed Stiles hadn't expected him to fight back.

Finally, Stiles composed himself. “So this is it?”

“I guess so. I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Who says I’m coming back?”

“I do!”

“You think I’ll come crawling back to you?”

“I know you will. Because I know you and I know them. You think you’re trading up? They’re violent, damaged werewolves who are so fixated on their own pain that they won’t have any room for yours. And as I just pointed out, Stiles, that doesn’t work for you.”

“I can make new friends!” Stiles sputtered. “I have plenty of friends. What do you think is going to happen? I’m so annoying that they’ll push me out of their pack?”

“Probably. You’re going to be making fun of Isaac, picking at him for not listening to you, mocking him as a nerd, telling him that his dreams are ‘pathetically unrealistic,’ and he won’t know that you poke your friends in order to make sure they actually like you. He’s going to hear his dad in your voice, and he’s going to throw you across the room, like he did when he beat you up in my house. Or do you think that someone who was willing to murder Lydia for her freshman-year put down – a motor, not a chain, was that it? – is going to listen to you call him stupid?”

“Derek won’t let him hurt me. That's not what pack is about. He didn’t let him hurt me during the full moon at the sheriff's station.”

“Derek was the one who used that anger against Lydia to get Isaac to try to kill her!” Scott exclaimed. “You know what I think is going to happen? You’re going to have a day when the Adderall isn’t working the way it’s supposed to and you’re going to be you, and it’s going to annoy Peter so much that he’s going to come at you with every nasty phrase and vicious quip a rich, entitled, white shitlord with exactly zero empathy for anyone other than himself else can muster. Unless you think the serial killer who used Lydia like a sock puppet is going to care that you’re neurodivergent?”

“He’s better now that's he come back. He’s different, and, anyway, Derek won’t let him do that either.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Stiles. Pete didn’t seem to care that much in the warehouse, did he? And since I’ve actually spent more time with Derek than you have, I can tell you that Derek has gone right back to listening to whatever Peter tells him.”

“Now that things are … “ Stiles bit his tongue. “I’ll be able to help Derek get the pack in order, including controlling Peter. He’ll listen to me.”

“Yeah, sure he will. He’ll listen to you until he doesn’t. And when he makes a decision which puts your father in danger – which is going to happen, because, like I said, they’re violent, damaged werewolves and your father’s the sheriff – you’re going to try to physically punish him because that’s what you do when your father’s in trouble. But instead of letting you hurt him like I would let you hurt me, he’s going to snap your arm like a piece of uncooked spaghetti.”

“That's not going to happen. He cares about me; he wouldn’t do that. And I know better that hitting a werewolf is dangerous.”

“Whatever you say, but I remember him breaking my arm even as he told me he was looking out for me. I also remember lying on the ground getting pounded by those three guys because you thought I somehow conjured up a cougar to put your father in danger. I’m absolutely sure he’s going to hurt you because that’s how he deals with betas who backtalk him, because he did it to me, and Isaac, and Erica.”

“I’m human. I’m not a werewolf.” Stiles said. “Derek’s under control, and he knows the difference.”

“How long do you think that’s going to last?”

“What?”

“How long do you think it’s going to take for him to start pressuring you to take the Bite?”

Stiles was taken aback. “You don’t know he’s going to do that.”

“Oh, yes, I do. Every beta makes him stronger. Everything you can do for him now, you could still do for him as a werewolf, only you’ll be safer and more useful. And, after all, the Bite is a Gift. I don’t think he’ll force you, but I’m sure he’ll run his hand up and down your leg until you say yes.”

“I didn’t think you could be this crude, but you keep talking about things he did in the past.”

“They happened last month!”

“Things aren’t the same as they were last month. It’s not going to be like that.” 

“Tell me, Stiles, why isn’t it going to be the same? Is everything going to be peaceful now? There’s going to be no more fighting at all?”

Stiles hesitated, and he had a look on his face that Scott had seen many times before. It was his secret face, when he had something he wanted to share, but he couldn’t. Scott thought about dragging it out of him, but he quashed that feeling. Stiles had chosen his side for now, and it wasn’t his. Let Derek deal with it, whatever it was.

The frustration in Stiles’s eyes boiled over. “You hate him for no reason. Yeah, I know he’s done some pretty terrible things, but in the last three months he’s had to deal with his sister being murdered and a war being fought with the Argents. Now that things have calmed down, he’s not that bad a guy. He may have gone about it the wrong way, but he tried to help you.”

“No, you see that’s the problem. He didn’t try to help me, he tried to _use_ me. If he had wanted to help me, he would have told me the truth the first time I met him. If he had wanted to help me, he wouldn’t have promised me a cure he had no intention of letting me take. If he had wanted to help me, he wouldn’t have slashed up my stomach and stepped on my throat because I tried to talk to Boyd. But I don’t hate him, I simply don’t think he’s someone who I should give control of my life to.”

“All the things he’s gone through doesn’t matter to you at all?”

Scott blinked. “Why should it? All the things I’ve gone through don’t matter to you. I’m a terrible friend because for the last three months I’ve been focused on staying alive and keeping people from murdering innocents.”

“And Allison.”

“She’s my fucking anchor!” Scott roared. “You were the one who figured that out. I needed an anchor to keep me from killing people, including you, so of course I’m going to pay attention to her! And that’s the point. You’re more than willing to give Derek the benefit of the doubt because he had three rough months, but you’re willing to toss ten years of friendship because in those same three months, I didn’t put your feelings first.” 

“Those three months weren’t a walk in the fucking park for me, either!”

Scott pointed toward the door. “I think you can go now.” 

“What?”

“Get out of my house. I’m done with you telling me how horrible I was to you, while you sit there and defend people who have tried to hurt or kill you or ordered other people to hurt and kill you, including me. So, you can get out and don’t come back until you’re ready to apologize.”

Stiles got up. He obviously hadn’t imagined it going like this. He had obviously imagined that he’d be able to rub things in Scott’s face and make him feel bad, but Scott was done with letting people use him to make themselves feel better. 

His best friend shuffled out the front door and slammed it so hard the pictures rattled. Scott understood Stiles better than anyone else; he’d be back. He’d work out that Scott hadn’t ditched him for something better; Scott had simply been forced by circumstance to focus on other things for a while. He had perfect faith that Stiles would understand that eventually; after all, they were best friends.

And if Stiles didn’t come back? If the last three months had taught Scott anything, it was that nothing was permanent. Everything could change. Before that night in the woods, Scott had been an asthmatic loser who wasn’t important to anyone but his mom and his best friend. Now, he was a werewolf and, if he got his grades up, captain of the lacrosse team. He had survived being shot, being stabbed, and being poisoned. He could survive this.

Scott looked at the clock. Maybe he would call Danny and see if he wanted to go to a movie.

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of people like to imagine Stiles choosing Derek over Scott. I don't think that would have bothered Scott as much as people think it would have. Joining the Hale Pack, canonically, would not be a particularly wise decision, and Scott would believe that Stiles would come to see that.


End file.
